YOU HELP OUR STAFF SERVE UP CHANGE.

There are two sides to the Zucker Family Community Kitchen. One side is full of staff and volunteers cranking out breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the other is the training ground for clients looking to gain or maintain their housing. That’s where you can find Angie DuPree, Training Director at One80 Place.

Angie gets clients ready for a new chapter in their lives. Through One80 Place Training, she works with them for five-weeks, teaching basic cooking techniques and proper food handling (each trainee gets ServSafe certified), all of which is then applied at One80 Place Café,  a social enterprise that provides lunches to local schools and businesses.

“One80 Place Café was really the missing link that is now there to help truly prepare the trainees for being in a real-time, busy kitchen,” says DuPree. “In addition to prepping and cooking, trainees are learning how to properly store food, put away dry storage items, and check in orders.”

Angie’s go-to advice in the kitchen is for trainees to remember the ten things that require zero talent: being on time, work ethic, effort, body language, energy, attitude, passion, being coachable, doing extra, and being prepared.

The connection that Angie gets to have with trainees through working with food is her favorite part of her job. “To see them a year later, walking down the street or in a restaurant, successfully housed with a great job, and knowing that One80 Place and our kitchen gave them that chance, that identity, that confidence, and that skill…and they remember me and really have a connection to One80 Place.”

There’s something about this kitchen. People really do connect with it. It’s not just being around the staff, but being in the atmosphere where the trainees feel like they’re giving back immediately. They want to work here!

-Angie